Everybody wants to be somebody fancy. Even if they're shy.

It blew my mind that what I was thinking was actually applicable to people's lives, and it certainly revolutionized family.

It confuses me that Christian living is not simpler. The gospel, the very good news, is simple.

The greatest stories go to those who don’t give in to fear.

Every day you live is a page. Every year, a chapter. Your life, a book. What is it about?

I don't wonder anymore what I'll tell God when I go to heaven when we sit in the chairs under the tree, outside the city........I'll tell these things to God, and he'll laugh, I think and he'll remind me of the parts I forgot, the parts that were his favorite. We'll sit and remember my story together, and then he'll stand and put his arms around me and say, "well done," and that he liked my story. And my soul won't be thirsty anymore. Finally he'll turn and we'll walk toward the city, a city he will have spoken into existence a city built in a place where once there'd been nothing.

Before I studied story, I was trying to write a novel, and it was terrible. It wasn't going anywhere, and I couldn't figure out what I was trying to do. It was really hard; much harder than I thought it was going to be. Now that I've studied story, I think I'd have a different approach and maybe I could actually get it done.